India aims $1 billion at holy but filthy river Ganges

Indian officials signed an
agreement with the World Bank on Tuesday
to use a $1 billion loan to finance the first
major new effort in more than 20 years to
cleanse the revered Ganges, one of the
world’s dirtiest rivers.

One-third of India’s 1.2 billion people live
along the banks of the 1,560-mile-long river,
many of them relying on it for drinking,
cooking and washing. Millions more visit for
ritual baths to cleanse themselves of sin. But
untreated sewage, agricultural runoff and
industrial waste have fouled its waters for
decades, and hydroelectric projects and
dams threaten to choke off its waters in
spots.
Tuesday, a religious leader on a hunger
strike over the effect of illegal mining on the
state of the river, Swami Nigamanand, died
after spending weeks in a coma.
The long-awaited loan is part of a
government project that aims to halt the
discharge of untreated wastewater into the
river by 2020. The project, founded in 2009,
replaced the 1986 Ganga Action Plan, the
last large-scale attempt to address the
pollution. That initiative was able to
introduce waste water treatment in certain
areas, but it failed to halt raw waste disposal
into the
Ganges. Critics said it was inadequately
financed and poorly managed.
Indian officials and representatives of the
World Bank said Tuesday that they hoped
the new project would be more successful.
They cited the greater amount of money
being invested, the broader focus on
regional environmental health and a
planned public education campaign.
“What we’re trying to do is take a step back
and not look at just one sector – waste
water – but take a larger sectoral approach,”
said Genevieve Connors, a water resources
specialist for the World Bank who is involved
in the project.
But she noted that the task of cleaning a
river was enormous, saying it“takes
decades and costs hundreds of billions of
dollars.”
Indian officials acknowledge that the
Ganges is just one of many rivers that
present public health problems.
“Most of India’s rivers have become
sewers,” said the environment minister,
Jairam Ramesh. “We have to now really
bring water into rivers.”
Japan helped to finance a cleanup project in
the Yamuna River, the largest tributary to
the Ganges, in 1993. But that project has
largely failed to make a dent in the river’s
pollution.